WordPress

Score8.6 out of 10

3,343 Reviews and Ratings

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203 Reviews

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WordPress Can Save You Thousands Of Dollars On Web Development Costs And Put You In The Driver's Seat Of Your Online Vehicle!

Rating: 10 out of 10

March 17, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I have used WordPress for years to build websites for business clients, and also ran government and local council-sponsored training seminars and workshops teaching businesses how to grow their presence online using WordPress.

After building hundreds of WordPress sites over the years and authoring a series of detailed WordPress training guides for beginners. I have recently turned all of my WordPress knowledge and expertise into a comprehensive Free WordPress training site at WPCompendium.org and developed WPTrainMe - a WordPress tutorials plugin that allows users to get instant access to hundreds of detailed WordPress step-by-step tutorials from their own WordPress dashboards.

Pros

WordPress allows users with no technical knowledge or coding skills to be in complete control of their web presence.
WordPress can save business owners thousands of dollars in web development and web design costs.
WordPress is a powerful, secure and highly scalable online content publishing platform and business marketing tool that costs almost nothing to run.
WordPress can be configured to automate many areas of website management and online marketing, including automatic updates and automatically driving visitors from search engines and social networks to your site whenever new content is published.
WordPress is open source software and benefits from the contribution of thousands of community users, including web developers and web designers.
WordPress is regularly updated (on average every 3 months) to provide users with new features, bug fixes, and to address security vulnerabilities found in previous versions.
WordPress is the most popular and fastest growing content management system in the world
I have written a detailed article listing 50 reasons why WordPress is the ideal choice for most website owners here: http://wptrainme.com/wordpress/50-great-reasons-why-you-should-choose-wordpress

Cons

The biggest challenge I have found with WordPress is training - helping clients and business owners understand just how much they can achieve with WordPress. Even though there is so much great information online about WordPress, most of it is not organized into a logical system, or aimed at technical users. This is why I have years developing a comprehensive WordPress 'A-Z' training system that takes users step-by-step through every aspect of using WordPress.

Likelihood to Recommend

Most people equate WordPress with "blogging". WordPress has evolved way beyond blogging to the point where many people are visiting websites that don't look like blogs, but are actually being powered by WordPress.

WordPress would suit most business uses and applications. I would only recommend custom web development work if a business owner cannot get the functionality they need or the web design look they want from a WordPress plugin or theme.

Martin Aranovitch

Founder, WPTrainMe.com - WordPress Training Plugin at WPTrainMe.com (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

8 years of experience

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WordPress: Delightfully easy, surprisingly powerful.

Rating: 9 out of 10

March 10, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

WordPress is a core part of our business, and it's even in our name! FlowPress comes from "For the Love of WordPress". We develop enterprise-level WordPress sites for our clients, and we use WordPress as an application framework for our own products. WordPress addresses the core problem of facilitating the effortless writing, publishing, and management of content in various forms.

I personally made the move to WordPress seven years ago, after working with other early platforms like Greymatter, Movable Type, and TextPattern.

Pros

Rapidly building + launching websites. You can have a WordPress environment set up in minutes with relatively little technical know-how. This lowers the barrier to entry and is a great stepping stone for people who want to build their own site "from scratch".
Stability. WordPress is built and supported by a global community of developers. The number of businesses, organizations, and independent professionals that depend on WordPress can't be matched by smaller CMS platforms or proprietary software. All this dependency makes WordPress too important to abandon.
Customization. Thousands upon thousands of plugins and themes make WordPress far more than just a blogging tool. E-commerce (WooCommerce, Shopp, Exchange), online education, corporate intranets (P2, O2, Multisite). You don't need to be a developer to build great things with WordPress.
Relatively easy learning curve. Once you become familiar with the administrator interface, you can jump from one WordPress site to the next and not have to re-learn everything.

Cons

Legacy code. It's both a blessing and a curse for WordPress. The team does a lot to make sure plugins and themes don't break over time, but that respect for reverse-compatibility comes at a cost.
Would be nice to see more modularity to build custom environments catered to different use cases. Basically, "strip out" functionality that isn't needed (e.g. multiple users in a personal blog) and create custom installation profiles/templates, a la Drupal.
More intuitive/user-friendly controls for custom user roles and capabilities. Handled well via 3rd party plugins like Members and Role Scoper, but it'd be nice to see it in core WordPress as well.

Likelihood to Recommend

WordPress is like a four-door sedan: great for most people, but not perfect for every situation.

If you're building a personal website or a website for a small organization, WordPress is a solid choice. If you're building a database-intensive web application, WordPress may be too opinionated for your purposes.

When in doubt, remember that WordPress focuses primarily on content and publishing. It's really easy to get started with that. But the further you get from that core purpose, the more difficult it becomes. WordPress is opinionated.

Andy McIlwain

Director of Content at FlowPress Inc. (SIDEKICK, WPUniversity) (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

7 years of experience

WordPress Is The Easiest Way To Run Your Business Online

Rating: 10 out of 10

March 8, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

WordPress is used to run the organization web site, as well as to build sites for clients. It is used for everything from small business websites to custom web applications.

Pros

WordPress is easy for users to understand, even if they have limited technical experience. There are a large number of resources where people can get help and answers to their questions.
WordPress is very versatile. A site can start off small and simple, and add complex features over time, such as eCommerce, surveys, mailing list integration, and more.
WordPress is open source software that thousands of developers are building and using it every day. Security issues are found and fixed quickly. Users get the benefit of security and features updates with the ease of clicking a button.

Cons

The search feature needs to be improved, especially the ability to search by multiple criteria.

Likelihood to Recommend

WordPress is well suited to most types of websites, from the smallest to the largest. While it can be customized to do just about any web task, it is less suited to situations where content management is not the main purpose of the site.

Lori Berkowitz

Web Developer in Information Technology at BeeDragon Web Services (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

11 years of experience

A review of Wordpress from the average guy!

Rating: 10 out of 10

March 5, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Department. Mostly for a blog, but with the amount of plugins, the blog had turned into more!

Pros

Ease of installation, as long as your hosting site has "easy install" and most of them do.
Amount of PlugIns, a solution for almost every need.
Ability to give the user access to update their own website!

Cons

URL structure. Categories for "pages"
Permalinks, not for the faint of heart!
Turning it from a blog into a website is still a challenge!

Likelihood to Recommend

As a full blown website, it's a challenge unless you are really advanced in plugin research.

Verified User

Employee in Marketing (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

WordPress serves... everybody.

Rating: 9 out of 10

March 1, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

For the last four organizations I've supported, as well as in my own endeavors, WordPress has been leveraged as both a blogging platform and as a simple CMS (Content Management System) to enable business users to manage online content with minimal software cost (and installation headaches) and a relatively easy learning curve. My clients have used it to build microsites for their customers, and several have used it as a way to manage content through the efforts of many authors with diverse responsibilities and levels of technical expertise by taking advantage of the security benefits of segmenting access across many levels of user accounts. When a small business, school, or not-for-profit organization needs to manage web content that is dynamic and fluid, they need a CMS that will allow them to keep publically-visible information up-to-date without needing to get the attention of a technician or web designer every time. WordPress allows the designer to configure the environment; but leave content creation, management, and expiration to the owners of the information.

Pros

Easy learning curve. I believe the mark of good software design is that it is accessible to both the power user, and those who just want to get their process up and running. WordPress does not require that users become an expert, or step outside of commonly-familiar document editing concepts, in order to look good in their online presence.
Ubiquity. WordPress is available on most web hosts I have done business with -- many will even do the installation on their servers in such a way that the customer is completely insulated from the 'plumbing' side of it's configuration (the web host makes the machine work, the customer makes the machine DO the work). Because it is in use by so many organizations and individuals, it is easy to locate talent for content creation, and web site design -- your local high school likely has a hundred kids who have used it for their own blog, and can take that skill with them into the workplace.
The power of Open Source. With huge community of users, developers, and contributors, WordPress has grown not just by the narrow view of a few visionaries. I have seldom ever had to wonder (for more than five minutes) if there was a way to solve a content-presentation problem within the WordPress world... the plugins, templates, and modules provided (often for free) can take you from idea to delivery in a matter of hours, not weeks.

Cons

Though things have improved with capabilities added through third-party templates and plugins, I would like to see more integrated support for sites that serve audiences both 'on the big screen' as well as on handhelds.

Likelihood to Recommend

One of the downsides to my favorite benefits -- ubiquity -- is that while there are large numbers of happy users out there who utilized WordPress in their own projects, there are also a large number of hackers who have become familiar enough with the environment that it is a common target. I have had at least two web sites become politcal targets of 'activists' who saw the content as reason enough to seek and exploit weaknesses. While the frailties of the sites were based in the hosting, not in WordPress itself -- the content was not protected from compromise once the attackers got to the MySQL database that WordPress is based on. If you plan to host and serve financial data or other information that could cause legal issues -- you may need to look for a product with multiple levels of security that just aren't part of the WordPress structure.

Dan Oblak

Technology Coordinator in Information Technology at AuthorHouse (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

A no-nonsense, honest, female review from someone who chose to work with WordPress everyday!

Rating: 9 out of 10

February 28, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use WordPress to build websites for our Customers, we also use it for our own website. WordPress provides a flexible and scalable website solution, that is easy to use and build upon. With it's many plugins a WordPress site can take on many functions and fulfil many categories of website. The versatility of WordPress means it can be a long term website solution, that the customer can manage themselves and develop as their business does. A WordPress site owner may not need to pay for hired help with developing the website, WordPress has a great support community and as it's open source, is free to use by anyone.

Pros

WordPress is very user-friendly. Few steps are needed to edit and add content and with 100's of online free tutorials, videos, manuals and support you can easily teach yourself how to use it.
WordPress is versatile. It can grow from a blog to website, to an e-commerce site with a forum and much more, you can stick with 1 site and just keep on growing and evolving it!
WordPress uses themes to give your site it's look and feel. There are 1000's of free and paid for themes available. A WordPress site can have a theme changed as often as you like, so your WordPress site can constantly update it's look without having to be totally rebuilt each time.
With the 1000's of free and paid for plugins available for WordPress, you can have nearly any function you can think of added in!

Cons

Like all software, WordPress get's updated. It's a good idea to try and update your WordPress core version every time but sometimes updates don't go all that smoothly and you can run into trouble with it. It would be nice to have a stress free update solution! I backup before every core update to cover myself.
It would be nice to see an image overlay/pop out included in the next version of WordPress, this should be standard.
It would be nice to see child pages automatically added to the menus. At present parent items are automatically added to menus, but child pages aren't and you have to go into the Menus options to add them. Not a bad thing really, but my clients tend to forget this extra step.

Likelihood to Recommend

Personally, I think WordPress is perfect for small businesses and start up businesses. It's also the next best website step to take after you've got fed up with your DIY/Free website. If you're someone who is not sure about how many pages your site will need to begin with, or maybe you think you might want to use the site to sell online later, WordPress is perfect, as you can start it off small, 1 page even, and then add on those other functions and pages as you need it.

However, there is a point when I say, WordPress is not the solution for your site. For me that point is if a customer wants a site to sell more than 100 products or if they need a site with a requires bespoke functionality. If you are going to spend over a certain amount of money on a site, then it may be better to get one made bespoke.

Lyndsay Moon

Managing Director in Marketing at Hashtag Websites Ltd (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

Wordpress is my swiss army knife in web design

Rating: 9 out of 10

February 24, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

WordPress was implemented as a website Content Management System (cms). It was used mostly in the Marketing department, with some implementations considered across the whole organisation. Wordpress provided the organisation with a reliable, flexible and appropriately scalable solution to their web needs for fundraising support sites. It was fast to implement, not cost prohibitive and most importantly easy for end users to use. It is also very flexible which meant that it can evolve with the organisation needs.

Pros

Wordpress is open source and has a large development community behind it. As a mature system, there are many ways to customise or expand on the system through the use of templates, plugins and development.
Wordpress has an easy to use content editor which meets the requirement of providing users with something they can use without needed specialist technical knowledge. Coupled with some customised development it can become a very simple system for people across all levels of an organisation to use.
Flexibility is one of the biggest strengths of Wordpress. Through themes, plugins and php based development, it can be purposed to suit almost any use case.

Cons

Wordpress will struggle to meet needs beyond a certain scale of content purposes. It does not have complex user role management which means it is not suitable for large intranet sites for example. This is not a failing of Wordpress, so much as a desire for it to be more scalable as it is nice to use.
One of the flip sides of ultra flexibility and open source is a lack of compliance standards in plugins etc. One must make good decisions about plugins to avoid security issues.
Wordpress needs to be updated frequently as do plugins, which means that resource is required to stay on top of the security of the site built with it.

Likelihood to Recommend

Wordpress is brilliant when used with appropriate scale. It is not a system that will cope with managing a large database of users with many different roles and functions. Wordpress is a brilliant way to rapidly build an easy to maintain site up to a certain size, trying to use Wordpress for a very large website with sophisticated role based access requirements would be difficult. It is not well suited for complex Intranet for example, however can work in conjunction with other systems. In my experience Wordpress is brilliant for delivering smaller websites with no complex role based access requirements.

Verified User

Former Employee in Marketing (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

The most powerful CMS

Rating: 10 out of 10

February 24, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using WordPress on all websites we have, and for our client's websites.

Pros

It's easy to use
It's flexible
It has a large developer base
It has a lot of extensions (ie plugins, themes)

Cons

Better loading speed
It can get clunky if you install a lot of stuff
Faster development

Likelihood to Recommend

If you want to get online, WordPress is the best way to do it fast and without troubles.

Eugen Oprea

Founder in Information Technology at EChOelse International Group (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

WordPress has changed my life!

Rating: 10 out of 10

February 21, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In addition to using WordPress for our own website, we take pride in creating WordPress sites for our clients and provide basic technical support for sites we've built as well as those created by others.

Pros

I have good technical skills, but I'm no programmer; however, with the power of WordPress and the many plug-ins available (both free and premium), I feel I can accomplish just about anything.
The WordPress interface is easy enough for most clients to use, so they can publish their own blog posts or update other content easily.
I love the fact that WordPress is database-driven, so when you make a change somewhere, it automatically updates throughout the site.
The people behind WordPress are constantly working to make it even better.

Cons

I don't know if it's a fault of WordPress, or just popular perception, but a lot of people seem to think that you don't need any technical skills to manage your own website. Clients need to understand that although they can easily update content, major changes are better left to the experts.
One-click installers should never be programmed to automatically set the username to "admin." Do-it-yourselfers have enough challenges without getting them set up with a serious security issue right from the get-go!
Perhaps there needs to be some built-in tutorials or more clearer messaging in the Dashboard to guide users who are new to WordPress.

Likelihood to Recommend

So far, I've only had one scenario where I wasn't able to accomplish everything I wanted using WordPress, and that was for an association membership site where members have to be approved before applying to join or renew. I had it working for a while using a certain plug-in, but one day it just stopped working and I've since switched to another solution.

Janet Barclay

Website Designer and Virtual Assistant at Organized Assistant (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

7 years of experience

Wordpress - a great choice for your next website

Rating: 10 out of 10

February 21, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have been using Wordpress to deploy our website along with websites for clients.

Wordpress allows us to easily build amazing websites. We are able to use all the functions and hooks it has built in to create a great end user experience. Along with making a site that is easy for the user to navigation and use, it allows us to manage the content easily. We regularly build sites that have a wide variety of functions such as automatic country detection and then load custom content for that country.

Using the builtin functionalities we are able to create custom edit screens for our clients so that they can easily add a wide variety of content such as jobs, training events, events, news blogs and anything else that the client requires.

The real beauty about Wordpress is that when we get a scope/brief from a client, we are not thinking about how can Wordpress do this, as we know it can do almost anything you throw at it. We therefore take time in planning what exactly the client requires from Wordpress, be it the actual content editor and the options available for each content type or the frontend theme that the end user sees.

Pros

Easily create and manage different types of content.
Security is really well maintained
Theming is really simple and you can on with what really matters without having to work out a difficult theming framework

Cons

Reordering pages out of the box. You can reorder pages using the order attribute of pages and posts, but having a drag and drop functionality would be a great bonus.

Likelihood to Recommend

Ecommerce. Although there are great plugins out there that do ecommerce with Wordpress, I would recommend another platform for dealing with ecommerce websites as these other platforms provide a lot more functionality and data and everything related to ecommerce.

Adrian Fraguela

Web / Digital Developer at Silver Agency (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

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WordPress serves... everybody.

Rating: 9 out of 10

March 1, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Easy learning curve. I believe the mark of good software design is that it is accessible to both the power user, and those who just want to get their process up and running. WordPress does not require that users become an expert, or step outside of commonly-familiar document editing concepts, in order to look good in their online presence.
Ubiquity. WordPress is available on most web hosts I have done business with -- many will even do the installation on their servers in such a way that the customer is completely insulated from the 'plumbing' side of it's configuration (the web host makes the machine work, the customer makes the machine DO the work). Because it is in use by so many organizations and individuals, it is easy to locate talent for content creation, and web site design -- your local high school likely has a hundred kids who have used it for their own blog, and can take that skill with them into the workplace.
The power of Open Source. With huge community of users, developers, and contributors, WordPress has grown not just by the narrow view of a few visionaries. I have seldom ever had to wonder (for more than five minutes) if there was a way to solve a content-presentation problem within the WordPress world... the plugins, templates, and modules provided (often for free) can take you from idea to delivery in a matter of hours, not weeks.

Cons

Though things have improved with capabilities added through third-party templates and plugins, I would like to see more integrated support for sites that serve audiences both 'on the big screen' as well as on handhelds.

Likelihood to Recommend

Dan Oblak

Technology Coordinator in Information Technology at AuthorHouse (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience